[Avodah] Faith and Doubt

Micha Berger via Avodah avodah at lists.aishdas.org
Tue Nov 8 16:50:11 PST 2016


On Tue, Nov 08, 2016 at 05:26:43PM -0500, Zev Sero wrote:
:> And who said [H]aran was? Who in his era questioned the existence of any
:> gods at all?

:                      And people very much questioned the existence
: and power of Avraham's God.

We were talking about agnostics. As in, people who questioned the idea
that there are any gods. Not people who question the existence of one
particular G-d.

When R' Besdin, or R' Riskin paraphrasing R' Besdin, suggested that Noach
or Haran were "agnostics", the intent could not have been as RnTK took
it, because the notion of an agnostic would be anachronistic.

I took it for granted R Besdin was referring to their inability to be
convinced one way or the other on this particular question, waiting for
evidence before actually committing irrevocably.

(Sense 2 or 3 of the word in http://www.dictionary.com/browse/agnostic ,
not sense 1.)

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha



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